Another Jacksonville man has had his death sentence overturned as the Florida Supreme Court continues to work through death row inmates who were sentenced before the law was overhauled.
Robert Peterson was sentenced to death for the first-degree murder of his stepfather, 64-year-old Roy Andrews. He also was convicted of evidence tampering.
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Police found Andrews' body at the Greenlawn Cemetery near Peterson’s ex-girlfriend’s grave in 2005. He had been beaten and shot twice.
Peterson was 41 and living at home with his mother and Andrews, who had been his stepfather since Peterson was 15.
Andrews had recently urged Peterson’s mother to make him move out and stop giving him money.
Prosecutors said Peterson told several people ahead of time that he was going to kill Andrews.
Andrews was working as a counselor at a local drug clinic, Jacksonville Metro Treatment Center, at the time of his death.
He left work around 9:30 a.m. Aug. 8, 2005.
On the same morning, security cameras at a hotel where Peterson was staying with his girlfriend showed him leaving his room wearing jeans, shoes, a jacket and a dark hat with a design on it.
Two people who worked near the cemetery where Andrews' body was found said they heard two loud pops that sounded like gunfire between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.
They said they saw a green pickup truck, which matched the description of Peterson's girlfriend's truck, quickly leave the cemetery.
Peterson's girlfriend told police that she gave him the keys to the truck the night before the murder and never saw it again.
Andrews' body was found shortly after he was killed. Near the body, law enforcement found a dark “Bike Week” baseball cap, which matched the one that Peterson wore when he left the hotel room that morning.
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Around 10:30 a.m. that same day, Peterson called his girlfriend at the hotel and asked her to let him into their room because he forgot his key.
Video surveillance showed Peterson dressed in different clothes from those he had worn when he left the hotel a few hours earlier.
A few days after the murder, police arrested one of Peterson’s acquaintances for driving on a suspended license. While Jackson was in custody, he agreed to call Peterson to ask about the murder.
Officers wiretapped Peterson's friend's truck and recorded a conversation in which Peterson detailed how he killed his stepfather.
He also told the friend that he beat Andrews with brass knuckles and made sure the vehicle used during the crimes had been “crushed.”
Court records showed various other pieces of evidence and witness statements that tied Peterson to the murder.
The jury convicted and recommended the death penalty by a 7-5 vote. In a string of Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court rulings followed up by action from Florida lawmakers a death sentence by a non-unanimous jury has now been found unconstitutional in Florida and a new law has been put on the books to address that.
In working through the cases of inmates already on death row since the sentencing law has been overhauled, the Florida Supreme Court has generally drawn the dividing line at the 2002 Ring case requiring a unanimous jury.
It has since been determined that ruling applied in Florida, so cases fully settled after that case have been getting new sentencing phases.
Cases settled before, however, have been turned away so far, with the court saying those sentences were given with the best understanding of the law at the time.
Earlier this week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott set the state’s first execution since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ultimately triggered this overhaul. Mark Asay, of Jacksonville, has been scheduled to be executed next month.